in judgment upon the simple-minded and chivalrous American soldier who
had succeeded him, and who was, in fact, the most loyal of husbands. The
natural result of her skepticism was an espionage and criticism of the
wives of the major's brother officers that compelled a frequent change
of quarters. When to this was finally added a racial divergence and
antipathy, the public disparagement of the customs and education of her
female colleagues, and the sudden insistence of a foreign and French
dominance in her household beyond any ordinary Creole justification,
Randolph, presumably to avoid later international complications,
resigned while he was as yet a major. Luckily his latest banishment to
an extreme Western outpost had placed him in California during the flood
of a speculation epoch. He purchased a valuable Spanish grant to three
leagues of land for little over a three months' pay. Following that
yearning which compels retired ship-captains and rovers of all degrees
to buy a farm in their old days, the major, professionally and socially
inured to border strife, sought surcease and Arcadian repose in
ranching.

It was here that Mrs. Randolph, late relict of the late Scipion
L'Hommadieu, devoted herself to bringing up her children after the
extremest of French methods, and in resurrecting a "de" from her own
family to give a distinct and aristocratic character to their name. The
"de Fontanges l'Hommadieu" were, however, only known to their neighbors,
after the Western fashion, by their stepfather's name,--when they were
known at all--which was seldom. For the boy was unpleasantly conceited
as a precocious worldling, and the girl as unpleasantly complacent in
her role of ingenue. The household was completely dominated by Mrs.
Randolph. A punctilious Catholic, she attended all the functions of the
adjacent mission, and the shadow of a black soutane at twilight gliding
through the wild oat-fields behind the ranch had often been mistaken for